Saffron may be the colour of choice for many in the aftermath of Narendra Modi’s “anointment” as BJP’s prime ministerial candidate, and black the colour of despair as leaders make a beeline for riot-hit Muzaffarnagar – chief minister Akhilesh Yadav visited on Sunday, followed by prime minister Manmohan Singh along with Sonia and Rahul Gandhi today – but red still remains the colour etched in one corner of the national capital.

As the results for the elections to the Jawaharlal Nehru University students’ union (JNUSU) were announced on Monday, and the Left-leaning All India Students Association (AISA) romped home by a comfortable margin, red flags appeared all over the campus, without any prompting, as the victorious students took out a rally.

The CPI(ML)-backed students’ outfit won all four seats for the central panel and bagged 17 counselor seats (School of Languages, School of International Studies, School of Social Studies etc). Akbar Chawdhary, Anubhuti Agnes Baba and Sandeep Saurav won by huge margins (for the posts of president, vice-president and secretary, respectively), while Sarfaraz Hamid had a narrow escape against DSF’s Sonam Goyal, winning the joint secretary’s post by only 60 votes. 

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The results appear almost a repeat of last year, when AISA had won all the top posts, barring that of the president’s. While the JNU campus retains largely a Left-leaning atmosphere despite reasonable performances by the BJP-affiliated ABVP and the Congress-backed NSUI, and the university has a constitution written with dollops of work by current CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat during his campus days in JNU, what is significant in the results announced today is the near-total decimation of the SFI, the students’ wing of Karat’s party, which ruled the roost on the campus not long ago.

According to students, the rift in SFI, with the breakaway Democratic Students Federation (DSF) putting up an impressive show, and the resultant split in votes between them have gone to AISA’s advantage.

No wonder, ABVP and NSUI are the reference point for AISA supporters, many of whom said the results show the youth’s rejection of the two major political parties and their policies. Om Prasad, an AISA supporter, said, “AISA’s victory is an answer to Modi’s model of development, which is only an attempt to bring in communal tension. It is also an answer to the Congress and its corruption and scams. People require a change that only AISA can provide.”

Anubhuti Agnes Baba, the new JNUSU vice-president, said, “The result is a mandate against the four-year undergraduate programme (FYUP), designed by the NSUI and ABVP, where students are treated as an experimental subject.”

Among the top issues on AISA’s list of agenda are reducing viva versus marks and to provide scholarship to PhD students for the complete seven years, instead of five years.